One frosty morning in January 1956, Gladys Brown and her younger brother, Nolan, drove north on Route 301 in Virginia. They needed a map to find their way to the Naval Proving Ground, a military research center on the banks of the Potomac River in Dahlgren, Va.
Brown, a 25-year-old mathematician later known by her married name of West, had worked for two years as a high-school teacher. Now she was starting a Navy job involving computers but had only a vague notion of what sort of mathematical work she would be doing.